The Founders of This Nicaraguan Brewery Are Living the Life

A full-time marriage of drinking beer and surfing in an exotic locale seems like a pipe dream, but for three recent college graduates, it's very real.

The idea for this fantasy life was born about three years ago, when Brendan DeBlois and Matt Greenberg were on a surf trip in Central America. The duo—who met at Hotchkiss, where they played lacrosse and roomed together—rented a car and drove up the coast from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, stopping to surf as much as they could along the way.

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"In Costa Rica we noticed a few craft beer brands at bars and restaurants," Greenberg, 26, says. "We had both worked at Cisco Brewers on Nantucket during a summer in college, and we thought, a craft brewery here would be a lot of fun."

When they arrived in Nicaragua and didn't find any craft beer in the burgeoning tourist destination, the location was an easy decision. The resort town of San Juan del Sur, where many Managuans have beach houses (think: a Nicaraguan version of the Hamptons), seemed perfect.

As soon as they returned from the trip, the pair began working on a business plan on their lunch breaks. They began fundraising and brought on a third partner, Bobby Hottensen, 25, who grew up with Greenberg in New York and was working in politics in Washington, D.C.

When the project looked like it would come to fruition, DeBlois, 26, quit his commercial real estate job in Denver and moved into Greenberg's parents' house on Nantucket. He returned to Cisco Brewers, where he began six months of "hands-on training."

Working with Cisco's brewmaster, Jeff Horner, DeBlois created pilot versions of each beer he wanted to serve at the Nicaragua brewery.

Test bottles brewed with Cisco Brewers.

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The beers gave the group something concrete to show to investors and once they had enough funding in early 2013, all three quit their jobs and moved to Nicaragua, "where the real fun started," Greenberg says.

DeBlois, Hottensen, and Greenberg.

After a wide-ranging search, the team settled on a location for the brewpub they would eventually open. Renovating the space, a former pizzeria, took about six months.

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All of the brewing equipment was imported from the United States, and when two shipping containers from Los Angeles arrived in Nicaragua, they were held up in customs. For six months.

When the equipment finally reached its destination, San Juan Del Sur, after a trip from Managua along the Pan-American Highway, another hiccup presented itself: because of low-hanging power lines, the truck couldn't make it down the brewery's street.

The scene during the brewery's renovation.

"We had to rent two forklifts and hire two drivers from the local fishing port," Hottensen explains. "We had one of them grab the tank from the truck at one end of the street and drop it on our front steps, where a smaller forklift would pick it up and maneuver it into our space. That was an interesting day."

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San Juan del Sur Cerveceria now makes five beers: a pale ale, IPA, brown ale, wheat beer, and a passion fruit ale. Mango beer and a Kolsch are in the works.

Local ingredients are especially valued. The brewery sources Nicaraguan chocolate, coffee, and rum in its brown ale; the passion fruit and mango come from friends who have farms outside of town.

"We give all of our spent grain to a local farm, where they feed it to their pigs, and in exchange we get organic greens we serve at our restaurant," DeBlois says.

Tacos are the star of the menu at the brewpub, which is open for lunch and dinner (and brunch on weekends), but an in-house smoker has allowed Stephanie Jean, the team's Canadian-born female chef, to expand into more interesting offerings.

"Gourmet Latin barbecue bar food" is how DeBlois describes the cuisine, which the team prepares for offsite events like pig roasts on the beach down the dirt road outside.

The three partners are looking to Costa Rica as a model for what could happen to Nicaragua in the next 10 years in terms of tourism.

"They have a craft beer festival with more than 50 beers on tap," DeBlois says. "We're trying to do the same thing here. There are a lot of Nicaraguans haven't had anything besides the national beer before, so it's exciting to give them something different."

They're working on eventually distributing their beer in the United States, looking to their mentors at Cisco Brewers as a model.

"We've built this brand around the place, just like Cisco did in Nantucket. People go there, try the beer, love it, and want to have more of it when they go home," Greenberg says.

For now, they can take solace in the fact that they've built a popular local brewery in a flourishing tourist destination—and they can still live out their dreams of being able to surf every day.

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